


Qualifications

by The_Sickfic_Sideblog



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dizziness, Gen, Passing Out, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 03:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10376502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Sickfic_Sideblog/pseuds/The_Sickfic_Sideblog
Summary: Pidge gets dehydrated, and the effects bring up sour memories.





	

It started with a tiny wave of dizziness. The Green Paladin looked away from the microscope and braced herself against the chair.

_ I've been looking through that thing too long,  _ she thought as her vision returned to normal. She'd also been fiercely battling some virus that was trying to get its grips on her. She'd done well fighting it off - she only occasionally felt extra tired or got a headache.

Taking care of her body like Shiro insisted, Pidge reached for her water bottle on the other side of her desk. It was completely empty. Unknown to her, it had been empty for almost twelve hours. She'd been working without sleep for longer.

She looked at the clock. 5:28am. The others would be up soon. She bet Keith and Shiro were already up, doing extra morning training. If she was fast enough, she could slip past them to get more water and get an hour of sleep before the day started. Then she could work more on her project.

Pidge ungracefully pushed her rolling chair away from the desk, riding it as far as it would take her. It wasn’t as far as she would’ve liked. Curse my small arms. With a tired sigh, she stepped up from the chair. But the ground swirled below her, curving into waves impossible for a solid foundation to achieve.

As the Green Paladin fell, she was immediately reminded of stepping out of the Garrison’s centrifuge. Floods of horrible dizziness and nausea crowded her mind. She failed over and over again, she had to go back in that spinning pod over and over again no matter how many times she tried to keep her nerve. The physics just wouldn’t allow it.

Pidge returned to the present and found herself on the castleship floor. It wasn’t swirling as bad, but it still blurred at the edges of her glasses.

_ I just got up too fast...  _ she told herself, slowly pushing her body to its knees,  _ Just take it slow, you won’t get dizzy again. _

* * *

 

Keith finished lacing up his shoes, grabbed his bayard, and headed towards the training deck. The best part about training this early was he would have to talk to exactly zero people. At the worst, Shiro would just be finishing up his session, they would nod to each other, and go their separate ways, and that wasn’t even so bad.

So Keith was decently unhappy when he saw Pidge rounding the corner. “Keith....?”

_ Fuck.  _ “Yeah, Pidge? You’re not usually up this early-”

Keith registered exactly what he was looking at. She looked on the verge of tears. Her skin was a ghostly pale color, her glasses were askew, there were concerningly dark bags under her eyes. She’d done more than just an all-nighter. Something was very wrong. Keith didn’t even need for her to pitch forward to know that.

“Pidge!” He caught her just in time, having to kneel to catch her before she hit the ground. She fell limply into his arms, metal water bottle clattering to the ground. Having a limp body in Keith’s hands was decidedly the worst feelings he’d ever felt. He brought her to the ground, trying to keep her head level with her heart.

“C’mon, Pidge...”

* * *

 

_ What....happened? Why am I on the ground? Why does Keith look so worried....? _

“Pidge? Katie...? Can you hear me?”

_ Keith doesn’t call me Katie....only Shiro does that... _

Pidge looked around with her limited range of motion. A familiar white tuft came into view - Shiro looked just as worried as Keith did. She remembered she’d been asked a question.

“...I can hear you.”

Oh god, did talking hurt. Blinking hurt, even just moving her eyes from Shiro to Keith hurt.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m...not sure. I just wanted to get some water, and I felt dizzy.....and I’m here.”

Keith filled in what he could. “She just passed out while walking. It was lucky I saw her, she was about to crack her skull open.”

Pidge let her mind wander - it was too much to listen to them talk. She still felt as though she were swirling in the centrifuge, about to pass out from the lack of blood in her brain. The castleship’s ceiling lights looked too much like the lights outside the contraption, moving faster and faster around her. She could hear her own screams, begging Iverson to stop the machine-

She broke. Hitches of sobs caught her breath as tears overflowed down her cheeks. The other two paladins looked down, expressions becoming more worried than before. Shiro took Keith’s place of holding her and stood with her in both his arms.

“Go fill up her water bottle. I’m gonna bring her back to bed.”

Keith nodded. He scooped up the water bottle and dashed to the kitchen while Shiro headed towards Pidge’s room. Each step of the Black Paladin jiggled her head more, making the disorientation worse. But before long, she was set on the comfort of her own bed. She made an extra effort to cling onto Shiro’s arms.

“Pidge, what’s going on?” he asked, kneeling next to her bed to be eye-to-eye. He pulled off her glasses. Just like her name, Shiro was the only one that knew she didn’t need them. It was simply part of her disguise as he brother.

“I-I...I’m so dizzy...I-I can’t see, I can’t think, my head, Shiro...” she devolved into tears again, “My head hurts...”

“Keith’s getting you some water right now. Try to take deep breaths, Katie. It’ll be alright.”

With comforting words and someone to hang onto, Pidge eventually calmed her breath. Some of the pain disappeared with her tears, but not all of it. “What’s going on...?”

“We think you’re dehydrated, and that bug finally got to you. When’s the last time you drank some water?”

The lack of an answer was all the information Shiro needed.

“Does your head hurt bad enough that you were crying? We might have to get you to a healing pod.”

“No...not that bad...I really don’t like being dizzy...”

Shiro’s confused look synchronized with Keith walking in. He’d filled up Pidge’s water bottle, along with his own, and looked determined enough to watch her drink the entirety of both of them. He sat down on the bed as Shiro investigated.

“Really? You applied to the Garrison, you knew you’d have to go through G-Force Simulators.”

“I had a really bad time with the centrifuge....”

The tone of her voice told Shiro that she wasn’t about to delve into the story, so he didn’t pry. He had a decent idea of what could’ve happened, though. All the students had to go through the centrifuge at some point, and no one came out of it happy.

Instead, he smiled, and handed her one of the water bottles. “Here, drink a few sips. I had trouble with the centrifuge too.”

Pidge took her sips but allowed her eyebrows to convey her confusion. Shiro laughed a tiny bit.

“Oh yeah. I must’ve taken that test at least twenty times and thrown up in half of them. I was eventually able to stay awake, but it was a  _ long _ process to get there.”

“But...you piloted the Kerberos Mission...”

The Black Paladin shrugged, “Doesn’t mean I didn’t suffer the centrifuge,” he turned his gaze, “Keith, you went through the same one Pidge did, right?”

Keith nodded, “Yeah. I’m pretty sure that thing wasn’t up to standard, though. It went faster than any cargo pilot would theoretically have to handle. And Iverson was a little too intense about it,” he smirked, “I dropped out before I could officially pass it.”

Pidge took a few more sips of water, “Wait...does that mean the only one of us that passed the centrifuge test is Shiro? Cause Hunk and Lance and I....we found the Blue Lion a few days before our next trial...”

This made Shiro laugh, “I think being a paladin of Voltron is enough of a qualification.”

 


End file.
